Inside eRA, February 21, 2002 (Volume 3, Issue 3)

eRA Addresses IMPAC II System Slowdowns

Starting in early January, IMPAC II users began reporting intermittent slowdowns in system response. Although performance analysis did not reveal host processor, memory, or database resource shortages, communications tests indicated network delays. The eRA Operations Team worked closely with the Center for Information Technology (CIT) to resolve possible network bottlenecks. A subsequent change improved network performance to the production servers. 

A more serious problem occurred when the production Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) database locked up on January 29 and had to be rebooted. Although eRA maintains a high-level service contract with Compaq, our hardware vendor, they did not fully disclose the results of their system log analysis. When a patch supplied by Compaq to solve the database lockup problem proved defective and had to be removed, Compaq’s deinstallation software erroneously deleted all maintenance previously applied to the operating system. As an interim solution, the Operations Team brought up the OLTP on the backup system until the correct maintenance level could be restored on the production server.

The probable cause of the database lockup is a Compaq operating system failure to properly release system resources related to network connections. The problem is similar to the common user experience of shutting down a personal computer and discovering that it did not turn off. After the January 18 IMPAC II deployment, this lockup problem was exacerbated by increased network usage. Until the vendor provides a permanent solution, Operations will need to restart the system every Sunday night. The impact of this temporary solution on users will be the same as that of regularly scheduled system backups. 

Application Scanning Status Update

Slow turnaround in the startup phase of full-production grant application scanning has been resolved. Scanned images have not been available in the IMPAC II Grant Folder within 72 hours of application receipt as expected. Essential government-furnished equipment that was not delivered on schedule now has been installed and tested. 

Full-production scanning involves over an order of magnitude increase in the number of applications to be scanned. In the current process, Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) images are produced when the Office of Research Services (ORS) scans grant applications. A contractor then converts the TIFF images to Portable Document Format (PDF). After extensive processing in which bookmarks and optical character recognition are added, the images are uploaded to IMPAC II. The software to accomplish these tasks has been used successfully in many pilot projects during the past year. To ensure satisfactory performance, the Paperless Office Processes Workgroup will continue to closely monitor all aspects of the scanning process.

ICSTORe Enhancements Available in March Release

The March 15 deployment of ICSTORe, a document management screen that can be accessed from the IMPAC II Grants Management, ICO, Peer Review, and QuickView modules, will include significant enhancements.

• For the first time, users will be able to include abstracts and resumes associated with grant applications in their ICSTORe hit list. Currently, summary statements are the only documents available. The March release will enable users to view abstracts or resumes one at a time or merged into a single Adobe Acrobat^® Portable Document Format (PDF) file for printing or online viewing.
• An Advanced Search tab will provide robust and flexible query functionality. Approximately 65 criteria fields will be available, including RFA/PA, Priority Score, Budget Mechanism, State, CANs, Total Cost Requested, and Crisp Term, as well as 16 special select conditions including Application Status Code, Active Grants, Human Subject Concerns, Summary Statement Exists, and Foreign Grants. Users will be able to enter multiple values for selected fields. 
• A Table of Contents (TOC) will be available for printed Council Books. The TOC for each Council Book will contain two lists, one sorted by Principal Investigator (PI) Name and the other by grant number.

For additional information on ICSTORe, consult the documentation on the IMPAC II website.

Multiple Race Coding Requires Changes to Third-Party Report Queries

To comply with a federal mandate, multiple-race functionality will be added to shared IMPAC II Person screens, Receipt and Referral (RR), Extramural Training (X-Train), and some Committee Management (CM) screens and reports in the March 15 deployment. Users who have indicated an ethnicity will be able to select multiple values from the list of races. These changes affect the database structure and require external shadow systems and third-party/ad hoc reports to access a new table, PERSON_RACES_T. This table will store RACE_TYPE_CODE and RACE_SUB_TYPE_CODE, which previously were stored in PERSONS_T. To ensure that reports return accurate data, queries must be modified to reflect the PERSON_RACES_T table.

New Procedures Protect Commons-Associated Profiles

In preparation for the June 2002 deployment of NIH Commons Version 2.0, Release 2, QRC, the contractor tasked with resolving data quality discrepancies, continues to map approximately 2,000 grantee records in the Commons to discrete IMPAC II profiles [see the February 4 issue]. To ensure the integrity of validated registrations, profile-level name fields, Social Security Number (SSN), gender, and birth date for these 2,000 records will locked to updates by IMPAC II users following the March 15 deployment. Users also will not be able to collapse profiles for these records, and no deletions will be allowed. Users who encounter a record that requires profile-level edits to any of these fields should contact the Helpdesk at 301-402-7469 or by email at helpdesk@od.nih.gov.

HEAT Supports Improved Project Communications

HEAT^®, a tracking system for user and operations support, development, testing, and configuration management, supports eRA’s goal of improving communications across project areas. eRA’s technical staff will use HEAT to share information and avoid duplication of effort. As a management tool, HEAT provides trend and distribution reports that will assist managers in identifying problem areas and tracking staff workloads. HEAT also will support system requirements by gathering information that will be incorporated with Rational^® RequisitePro^®.

Now in full production for the eRA Helpdesk staff, this collaborative tool’s Web-accessible data entry screens and knowledge base will be available to the entire project team by mid-April. After identifying requirements for key process areas, the HEAT development team has designed prototype screens to meet the specific needs of developers, analysts, testers, and other functional areas. As user feedback is received, requirements for this tool will be refined. Pre-deployment training sessions will be announced in Inside eRA.

Meet the eRA CIO

Donna Frahm has been appointed the eRA Chief Information Officer (CIO), with responsibility for establishing project management processes as eRA continues to outsource development efforts. Donna controls the eRA budget and is tasked with information resource management (IRM) planning and reporting as well as tracking overall project costs and schedules. In this capacity, she manages the efforts of eRA’s independent verification and validation (IV&V) contractor, Soza and Company, Ltd. She also reviews and approves all eRA development efforts. In her new role, Donna works closely with the eRA Project Management team led by Dr. John McGowan and Mr. Jim Cain. She also interacts with the NIH CIO, Mr. Al Graeff. 

Certified as a federal CIO by Carnegie-Mellon University, Donna brings a Bachelor of Science in Accounting, Master of Science in Information Systems, and 23 years of government experience—including six years at NIH—to her new position. To attain federal CIO certification, Donna completed coursework in core competencies defined by the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996, which modernized the management of federal information technology investments. Donna looks forward to applying her extensive expertise to the integration of her mission-critical responsibilities with eRA’s cutting-edge environment.

eRA Appoints Communications and Outreach Director

Carla Flora, who for the last two years has been Chief of the Software Development and Programming Branch, Division of Extramural Information Systems (DEIS), has accepted the position of Director, Office of Communications and Outreach. In her new role, Carla will address the strategic communication and outreach needs of the eRA Project. Amongst her many responsibilities, Carla will oversee the design and implementation of the enhanced eRA website, development of exhibit materials, publication of newsletters directed to NIH staff and the extramural scientific community, and planning of outreach activities. She also will facilitate communication about the eRA Project amongst other project team staff, the NIH, and the scientific community.

Prior to joining DEIS, Carla worked at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), where she was Chief of the Information Technology and Analysis Branch for 10 years. With over 26 years of service at NIH and a Bachelor of Science in Technology and Management, Carla brings comprehensive knowledge and skills to her new position. 

iEdison Signs Agreements with Federal Research Agencies

The United States Air Force (USAF) Electronic Systems Center (ESC) and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) are the most recent federal agencies to adopt the Interagency Edison (iEdison) invention reporting and tracking system. The ESC engages primarily in applied research that supports aerospace defense. As the principal research agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the ARS develops solutions to high-priority agricultural problems.

Developed by the NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER), iEdison currently enables 390 grantee/contractor organizations to electronically report inventions, patents, and licenses that result from funding agreements with 16 participating federal agencies. iEdison supports compliance with the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which encourages the transfer of technology from the research laboratory to the commercial and public sectors. In CY2001, over 2,200 inventions were reported using iEdison.

NIH IC staff has an important role to play in invention reporting. During processing of competitive renewals and noncompeting awards, they use the PHS 2590 face page and PHS 398 checklist to determine whether grantees have had inventions in the most recent funding period. To facilitate this activity, IC staff uses a secure interface, iEdison Report-Lite (ERL), to reconcile invention reporting by awardees with iEdison records. Staff members who have questions about this role should contact the eRA Helpdesk at 301-402-7469 or by email at edison@od.nih.gov.

During the redesign currently underway, iEdison will migrate from a standalone, client/server system to a Web-enabled eRA application that conforms to current graphical-user interface (GUI) standards. Deployment of the redesigned iEdison system is scheduled for late summer 2002. 

IMPAC II Release Schedule as of February 21, 2002

The next IMPAC II deployment is scheduled for March 22. Release highlights for each IMPAC II module are listed below.

Module	Version	Highlights
Committee Management	3.9.11.0	Committee Management (CM) users will see the following enhancements in the March release. Business rule change for uploading a roster. IRG or SEP rosters must contain the following information for standing and non-standing members: 1) a roster address, 2) one expertise (not SRA expertise, just expertise), 3) a gender code (M, F, or U), and 4) an ethnicity and race code (any value except null). New member types. The Center for Scientific Review (CSR) has been approved for two new member types, Temporary Member–Senior Review and Assistant Professor Member. All affected forms and reports will be revised to include the new member types. The following screens and reports will be modified to support changes in race and ethnicity coding:  Committee Status screen, Nomination Slate screen, Meeting Data screen, Advance Person Search screen, Person Involvement screen, Professional Area Breakdown Report, Worksheet Report, Individual Nominee Data Sheet Report, HHS 532 Report, Slate Roster Report, Member Log Report, Committee Roster Report, Appointment Snapshot Report, Person Snapshot Report, and NIH Consultant File Form Report.                      Automatic window positioning disabled. After users open the CM application, they may move the window to any location on the screen. The screen will remain in that position throughout the session.
CRISP Plus	3.4.8.0	Automatic window positioning will be disabled. When a user moves a window to a different part of a screen, the window will remain at that position throughout the session.
Grants Management	1.9.7.0	Grants Management (GM) users will see a number of enhancements in the March release. Stem cell data elements will be shown on the GM Admin screen.                        The addition of a "Links" dropdown menu will provide users with access to websites frequently used by grants management, such as the F&A rate file, PMS, and many others. The length of the Human Subjects field will be increased to accommodate new Federalwise Assurance of Protection for Human Subjects (FWA) numbers. The Edit checker will automatically exit if all rules passed.                      Users will be able to search on any fiscal year when using the T-5 Receipt screen and/or the Workload screens.  The City field will be added to the list of parameters in the Assignment Rules module.                      Automatic window positioning will be disabled. When a user moves a window to a different part of a screen, the window will remain at that position throughout the session. Phase III of ICSTORe is included in this release. For details, see ICSTORe Enhancements Available in March Release in this issue. In addition, the first phase of accommodating awards processing for the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ) will be implemented. New edit checks, which should be transparent to NIH users, have been added.
Institute and Center Operations	2.7.8.0	Phase III of ICSTORe is included in this release. For details, see ICSTORe Enhancements Available in March Release in this issue.
Peer Review	3.0.1.0	Peer Review users will see several enhancements in the March release, including: A new Advanced Person Search Hit List Report will be available.               Users will be able to print multiple copies of the Voter Sheet, each with a corresponding voter identification number.               The modified Percentiles Administration screen will enable inclusion of Fellowship activity codes (Fs). Phase III of ICSTORe is included in this release. For details, see ICSTORe Enhancements Available in March Release in this issue.
QuickView	1.8.5.0	Automatic window positioning will be disabled. When a user moves a window to a different part of a screen, the window will remain at that position throughout the session. A navigation bug on the menu used to obtain Principal Investigator (PI) information has been fixed.
Receipt and Referral	1.3.0.0	Users will be able to indicate multiple races for applicants processed through Receipt and Referral. The human embryonic stem cell (HESC) code will be included on the View Application Status screen. If a user has not entered a project start date and/or project end date, the system will generate these dates when the application is released from the Division of Receipt and Referral (DRR).
Training Activities/Payback	2.7.6.0	Key NIH staff members now will be notified by email when electronic Appointments and Terminations are received in Training Activities (TA) through the Commons Extramural Training (X-Train) application. Fellowship support payment amounts will be displayed. Previously, only support periods, not pay amounts, were displayed. The new Trainee Reassignment Report informs ICs of trainees who recently had prior support with a different IC. This important information leads ICs to transfer paper files associated with trainees to the current supporting IC.   For each trainee, all educational degrees will be displayed on the Appointment screen. Previously, only the highest degree was shown.

For information about upcoming releases, contact the Helpdesk at 301-402-7469 or by email at helpdesk@od.nih.gov.

IMPAC II Training Opportunities as of February 21, 2002

The Human Resource Development Division (HRDD) has scheduled the following IMPAC II courses.

The following courses are also offered; however, there are no scheduled sessions at this time or scheduled classes are full. For more information or to request a class, visit the HRDD website at http://learningsource.od.nih.gov or call 301-496-6211.